Miss Beauchamp : a Philistine. By Constance McEwen. 3 vols.
(Chapman and Hall.)—The reading of this book, or, at least, of as much of it as we could manage, has left little impression besides a languid wonder why the heroine is described as "a Philistine." She seems to have had quite different qualities. She was highly testhetic, had in particular a marvellous gift of recitation, and was generally a highly romantic person. She makes a love-match on the very beat principles, and is generally, we should say, a very model of all that "Philistines" are not. As for the story, it is about the thinnest and most unmeaning that we have ever found filling, or trying to fill, three volumes. Diana Beauchamp, anxious to clear her ancestral estate by the exercise of her gift of recitation, goes to a certain entrepreneur, a Mr. Cantilupe. Mr. Cantilupe falls madly in love with her ; but she marries a more congenial spirit, Sir Blaise Pascal. Sir Blaise is, conveniently for the development of the story, an Irish landlord. Mr. Cantilupe whispers to his tenantry that he is an oppressor, and he is murdered. The murderer dies penitent, and Lady Pascal remains faithful to the memory of her husband. That is about all, and how it is spun out into some seven or eight hundred pages, is more than we can say.
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